The elections of Maria Elisabetta Casellati to the presidency and Roberto Fico to that of the Chamber in no way foreshadow a government between the centre-right and the Five Star Movement but they undoubtedly show how strong is the personal axis that unites Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio, the major winners of the elections and also of the Parliament presidencies match. From their de facto alliance, the new government will be born after Easter, for which consultations with the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, will begin on 3 April, after Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni went to the Quirinale yesterday to present his official resignation, remaining in office only for the handling of current affairs.
From what is understood and according to reliable rumors, the government that emerges should have five basic characteristics:
1) will be a government formed by the Five Stars and the League, but hardly by the entire center-right, because Berlusconi, despite making the best of a bad lot and always having the future of his companies in mind, does not want to be crushed by the Salvini-Di Maio axis but also because the Five Stars do not like it;
2) however, neither Di Maio nor Salvini will lead the next government, because no one has the numbers to assume the premiership, even if the two will be the real majority shareholders of the new Executive, of which it cannot be completely excluded that they could symbolically become vice presidents;
3) the new Prime Minister will probably be a third figure, drawn from the supporters of the No vote in the referendum of 4 December 2016 and probably from the vast range of former presidents of the Constitutional Court, among whom the strongest candidate today seems to be that of Giovanni Maria Flick, even if he fends off saying that "it's a fiction" and even if neither Salvini nor Di Maio will decide but the President of the Republic, Mattarella;
4) the new government will come up with a program limited to a few points: attack on the costs of politics, some measures on pensions by picking even if perhaps not completely abolishing the Fornero law, tightening on immigration, new electoral reform with a majority bonus (so abhorred at the time of the Italicum) to the winning list and, a once approved, return to elections, Quirinale permitting;
5) the new government it will certainly not have a five-year horizon (it could last six months or, at most, a year until the European elections before the return to the political elections) and will not be able to carry out neither the flat tax nor the basic income, which had been the main promises of the electoral campaign that has just ended and which will be postponed to the next legislature, pace of fools who believed in the fairy tales of the League and the Five Stars, but with great relief for the public accounts and the markets, which hopefully they won't see casa Italia derailed in just months.
